Category: Uncategorized

pre-final

I took the final. It was, of course, all essays. I spent 2 or 3 minutes staring blankly at the stuff after reading it, then I began outlining. I wrote a page or two (full of redundancy) on essay one. Then I found my own personal little font of essay-writing goodness, and streamed out like 10 pages of stuff. It was well written.

Content was good, perhaps a mite basic, but good. Perhaps I expect to much of myself. But I was happy with it. Hope I eventually get some sort of feedback from the instructor about something in this course at some point.

… I have broadband
… I have wireless, of course

People who understand my needs. =)

Unsalted roasted almonds
Green olives stuffed (some with sundried tomato and some with garlic)
Seedless red grapes.

If not for the grapes, I’d say I’m on the vegan atkins diet. =)

I have a new cell phone, which cost less than 40, and a new cellular provider, which gives me great reception in my bedroom (unlike sprint), but what I don’t have is a new number. Aww yeah.

(downsides: two year contract, and no oops-my-cell-was-lost-or-stolen insurance option, which may well bite me in the ass later).

It’ll take a couple days before I start being able to recieve calls, but I can make them just fine. If I had your # before, please to be sending it to me again.

Thank you kindly good people.

Even better news. five minutes after I wrote this the first time, they made my cell phone completely functional. Yay. =)

Turns out the solar company is looking for someone to do an end-to-end on a sensor <-> webpage system for them. Basically take the meter, which talks to a box which speaks tcp/ip and have it auto update a database which would in turn generate web pages on demand for customers to see their power output. Also he wants it secure and scaleable. He wanted me to give estimates without knowing jack or shit about their hardware. I said $75/hour, half time, two months to a demo, 6 months to final product, and I essentially told the guy that I was pulling that out of my ass. The problem I would see myself spending the most time on is getting the box to do the right thing with respect to the network, but given that I know nothing about the hardware, it’s impossible for me to make any sort of a reasonable estimate. I also have no expectations of this panning out. I’m honestly not sure if I want it to. It’d solve my financial woes, and I’m pretty sure I could probably do it, but this would be taking far more initiative than I ever have in the past, and doing something very much unlike anything I’ve ever done before (independent contracting, assembling bits, setting up servers from scratch, gauging security and reliability of a system, working without direction or supervision). Scary thought for me. If I did it, though, major boost to the self-confidence. But, like I said, probably not going to get the offer anyway. He has my resume, he says we’ll talk before the end of the month.

On the other hand, there’s a low-level help desk nerd job at Cal. Pay scales ranges from 37k to 70k. The thing is, my experience at cmu’s user services lets me check every single box on their list. There would be nothing new, no challenge, and probably still alot of headaches, due to professors who can’t figure out where their computer’s power switch is and want to be called sir, and have their shoes shined, and their server rebuilt yesterday. Plus, there’s all the joys and sorrows of being within a hierarchical authority system. I’ve been down this road before.

On the other hand, they’d be fools not to hire me. I’d probably get much higher pay than I did at cmu, maybe even in the upper echelons of that range. But, it’s not a job I’d keep for long (not that they know that, not that I’d tell them). And to take it, knowing I wouldn’t be there long when they’d expect me to… Well, it’d rub me wrong in alot of ways.

I made a couple of choices in my youth. Early on, I was thinking of becoming a Catholic priest. No joke, I was an earnest, devout kid. Ask me about it sometime. How I’ve changed … and yet not. But I wasn’t content with the answers I was given. Even to questions that have no satisfactory answers (maybe if they’d said that, I’d have listened. I do not know). When college came around, I was considering ROTC. I adamantly did not want to {depend on | burden} my parents in terms of college tuition. But I made a choice not to submit myself to their authority structure, and still to go to the prestigious school (how might life have been different had I gone to the school where I got personal attention in the honors college program instead, and had it all paid for by scholarship. I’ve wondered that from time to time), relying instead on my parents’ generosity. Me now would definitely have made some different choices, but I wouldn’t be me now if not for those earlier choices, made by me then. Perhaps I’d still be wondering how things would have been different had I gone to cmu. Perhaps, perhaps not, but such speculation is essentially irrelevant.

So, I’m an introvert. But I hate living alone, riddle me that. Since friday, I’ve more or less been alone in the house. It is/was a little weird. This place is huge, and it’s just me. But I did the unheard of and stepped out of the house. Did some reading of javascript, mysql and css books at b&n. (not that it looks like anybody actually cares about that in the jobs I’ve seen online, or, to the extent they do, they assume you already know it like the back of your hand), grabbed dinner at el sombrero, hit comic relief and browsed for a bit, then walked back home. It was a good thing. The house no longer seems so eerie.

I haven’t actually studied for that final thing I have coming up. Oh well…. =)

Submitted my berkeley application, on time even. I honestly don’t really expect to get in. I am singularly unimpressed with my performance in this class to date. That having been said, I’m still giving it a shot.

I’m going to replace my cell. I have a sprint plan. Now, my question is, should I continue with this same service (problematic reception at home, and full price for a new phone) or should I get a new plan with someone else. If the latter, who with?

I posted my resume in 2 places on friday afternoon (hotjobs and monster) and a third on saturday (craigslist), and had two responses by sunday. On Saturday, a recruiting agency contacted me from monster, and I will probably look into it, but more exciting was a solar power consulting company that contacted me about doing web application goodness for them (sadly in south sf, a little over a mile from bart).

And this was on a weekend.

I can hardly wait to see what the week holds for me.

I tink I gots me a good resume.

*booty shakin celebratory dance*

So, two years ago, I wrote this essay on the same topic, and the content seems to have changed very little, even if I think the writing style and awareness of what’s going on behind it have improved.

Capital gains tax cuts will make everyone better off